Oregon ArtsWatch

DanceWatch Weekly: Election night recovery edition

Linda Austin rings the bell, Chiarini and Hobbs on the same bill, Polaris continues

It’s been a rough couple of days, and thank goodness we have art. Go see a show: dance, theatre, music, a movie, anything. Let’s lose ourselves in something other than this insane political roller coaster we’ve been on for so long. Artists are always inspiring, and they thrive under any conditions.

Opening this week are two concerts that have long been in the making, The last bell that rings for you from choreographer Linda Austin, and Epoch, my own concert that I am sharing with push/Fold’s artistic director Samuel Hobbs. Hobbs and I will be debuting two new works, November by Hobbs and my The Kitchen Sink.

Also happening this weekend is the second weekend run of Polaris Dance Theatre’s 15th anniversary show, Reclaimed, also long in the making. I spoke with Polaris’s Artistic Director Robert Guitron last week, and you can read that conversation here.

Reclaimed
Polaris Dance Theatre
November 3-12
Polaris Dance Theatre, 1826 NW 18th Ave
Polaris, a contemporary dance company directed by Robert Guitron and Sara Anderson, is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a program of 12 dances collected from past repertory to the present in a program aptly titled, Reclaimed.

The Kitchen Sink by Jamuna Chiarini as a part of Epoch, a shared concert with Samuel Hobbs. Photo by Chelsea Petrakis.

Epoch is a double bill shared by choreographer Jamuna Chiarini (your correspondent here) and dance company push/FOLD – directed by Samuel Hobbs. The concert marks the debut of two new works, my The Kitchen Sink and November by Hobbs.

November, set to an original score by Hobbs, is a work for four women enveloped in a soundscape of solitude that explores the heightened, powerful, but subtle sensorial moments that occur just before a fall. November will be performed by Jessica Evans, Briley Jozwiak, Caty Raupp, and Holly Shaw.

The Kitchen Sink, set to an original composition by Lisa DeGrace, is a trio performed by myself, Celine Bouly, and Abigail Nace. It started after my hip surgery in the Spring of 2015. Not wanting this operation to be the end of my dance career, as it has been for so many others, I became determined to re-discover my body’s capacities while finding freedom in movement, in spite of new limitations in mobility.

I wanted to push myself beyond the place where my decades of dance training, performance, and composition had brought me in order to investigate what makes a “traditional dancer.” I was not interested in leaving the field but in finding new ways to flourish within it. I wanted to know, “Am I the same person now that I cannot dance in the same way I used to? Has my worth as a dancer diminished? Do I still have something to offer the world as a dance artist?” These are some of the questions that I asked myself in the process of making this new work.

Originally inspired by the sitting image of performance artist Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present, the choreographic process began in chairs, but as my body healed, the movement evolved to standing, shifting weight, walking, running, and falling. The dance addresses the body’s relationship to itself, objects, environments, and others. The work explores identity, aging and time, cultural expectations, connectivity, constriction, solitude, and sisterhood to name a few. Of course, I hope you come see for yourself!

The last bell rings for you. Photo courtesy of Linda Austin Dance.

The last bell rings for you
Linda Austin Dance
November 12-20
7 pm November 16, video installation + karaoke party
Shaking the Tree Warehouse, 823 SE Grant StThe last bell rings for you is the second chapter in Linda Austin’s (Un)Made dance triptych which began in 2015 with the (Un)Made Solo Relay Series, and will culminate in 2017 with an ensemble work called world, a world.

The last bell rings for you, which will be performed this weekend and next, is a collaborative, large ensemble score (a structured framework for improvisation), that features movement artists claire barrera, Jin Camou, Nancy Ellis, Jen Hackworth, Allie Hankins, keyon gaskin, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles and Takahiro Yamamoto as well as a diverse group of 18 community participants who learned the material in a series of rehearsals a week ago.

The performers will be discovering pleasure in such group behaviors as singing, walking, bell-ringing, and dancing.

The (Un)Made Solo Relay Series was a six-month adventure that began in March 2015 with a solo created and performed by Linda Austin, who then passed it down, like a game of telephone in relay fashion, to eight other performers: Jin Camou, keyon gaskin, Matthew Shyka, Linda K. Johnson, Nancy Ellis, Robert Tyree, Tahni Holt and Jen Hackworth. These performers then in turn passed it down to a group called the Dream Team—Claire Barrera, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Takahiro Yamamoto— and finally performed again by Linda Austin herself.

We the audience tracked the details from Austin’s original performance through to each one of the performers, observing what was lost, what remained and what was changed. The entire process was chronicled on the (Un)Made website and includes performance and rehearsal photos as well as writing by Linda Austin and Allie Hankins, who acted as the dramaturg for the project.

Linda Austin, is the co-founder and director of Performance Works NW along with her husband, the veteran lighting designer Jeff Forbes. She has been making dances and performing since 1983 with a focus on visual elements and commissioned music. Her work is playful, intimate, soulful and witty.

I interviewed Austin in 2015 in celebration of Performance Works NW anniversary. You can read that interview here.

If you would like to catch up on the project, you can watch all 12 versions of Austin’s 2015 Solo Relay Series on a 6-channel video installation as part of a karaoke, video installation party on Wednesday.